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Gavin Edmund Pretor-Pinney is a British author, [1] known for his books The Cloudspotter's Guide and The Wavewatcher's Companion .
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Gavin Edmund Pretor-Pinney is a British author, [1] known for his books The Cloudspotter's Guide and The Wavewatcher's Companion .
Pretor-Pinney is son of Anthony Robert Edmund Pretor-Pinney and Laura Uppercu, daughter of George Winthrop Haight, of Manhattan, observer for the American Bar Association and a specialist in international law. [2] The Pretor-Pinney family were landowners at Somerton, Somerset since the 1800s, descendants of the sugar merchant and Mayor of Bristol Charles Pinney; Anthony Pretor-Pinney had Somerton Erleigh, named for the family's former house on a different part of the estate, built in 1972–3. [3] [4]
Pretor-Pinney attended Westminster School, the University of Oxford, and Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.
He co-founded the magazine The Idler and founded the Cloud Appreciation Society in 2004. [5] He grew up in West London and now also lives in Somerton, Somerset.[ citation needed ]
Somerton is a town and civil parish in the English county of Somerset. It gave its name to the county and was briefly, around the start of the 14th century, the county town, and around 900 was possibly the capital of Wessex. It has held a weekly market since the Middle Ages, and the main square with its market cross is today popular with visitors. Situated on the River Cary, approximately 8.8 miles (14.2 km) north-west of Yeovil, Somerton has its own town council serving a population of 4,697 as of 2011.
The Idler is a bi-monthly magazine, devoted to its ethos of 'idling'. Founded in 1993 by Tom Hodgkinson and Gavin Pretor-Pinney, the publication's intention is to improve public perception of idling.
The Morning Glory cloud is a rare meteorological phenomenon consisting of a low-level atmospheric solitary wave and associated cloud, occasionally observed in different locations around the world. The wave often occurs as an amplitude-ordered series of waves forming bands of roll clouds.
Tom Hodgkinson is a British writer and the editor of The Idler magazine, which he established in 1993 with his friend Gavin Pretor-Pinney. His philosophy, in his published books and articles, is of a relaxed approach to life, enjoying it as it comes rather than toiling for an imagined better future. The Idler was named after a series of essays written by Dr Johnson from 1758 to 1760.
Douglas Scott Botting was an English explorer, author, biographer and TV presenter and producer. He wrote biographies of naturalists Gavin Maxwell and Gerald Durrell. Botting was the inspiration behind and writer of the 1972 film The Black Safari, a role-reversal parody of English explorers, with Africans touring England, shown in the BBC 2 documentary series The World About Us. He also featured in much other BBC programming, including Under London Expedition exploring the London sewerage system, as part of the BBC2 nature series The World About Us. He wrote numerous Second World War and early aviation books for Time Life Books. Botting took part, with Anthony Smith, in the first balloon flight over Africa.
Grand Designs is a British television series produced by Boundless and broadcast on Channel 4 which features unusual and often elaborate architectural homebuilding projects.
Roy Schiffer Pinney was a professional photographer, herpetologist, writer, journalist, war correspondent and pilot.
Cirrocumulus undulatus is a variety of cirrocumulus cloud. The name cirrocumulus undulatus is derived from Latin, meaning "diversified as with waves". They have a rippled appearance due to wind shear and usually cover only a small portion of the sky. They appear in bands as small patches or layers. Occasionally, they comprise two or more wave forms superposed upon one another. The individual cloudlets can either be circular or elongated in the direction of the rows.
The Cloud Appreciation Society is a society founded by Gavin Pretor-Pinney from the United Kingdom in January 2005. The society aims to foster understanding and appreciation of clouds, and has over 60,000 members from 120 countries, as of September 2023.
Lieutenant Colonel William Henry Rankin was one of only two known persons to survive a fall from the top of a cumulonimbus thunderstorm cloud; the other was Ewa Wiśnierska. He was a pilot in the United States Marine Corps and a World War II and Korean War veteran. He was flying an F-8 Crusader jet fighter over a cumulonimbus cloud when the engine failed, forcing him to eject and parachute into the cloud. Rankin wrote a book about his experience, The Man Who Rode the Thunder.
Kate Summerscale is an English writer and journalist.
Bidisha Mamata is a British broadcaster and presenter specialising in international affairs and human rights, political analysis, the arts and culture. She is also a multimedia artist making films and stills.
Anthony Hayward is a British journalist and author. He is a regular contributor to The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, and has written more than 20 books about television and film. The subjects of justice and censorship have been constant themes throughout his work. "Hayward is particularly good on conflicts with authority," wrote one critic reviewing his biography Which Side Are You On? Ken Loach and His Films.
In the afternoon of 23 April 2007, Ray Bowyer, a pilot flying south towards the island of Alderney in the English Channel sighted unidentified flying objects. He reported the sighting to an air traffic controller who told him that a second pilot had seen something similar. In Bowyer's report to the British Civil Aviation Authority he said he saw two bright, stationary objects. Two passengers on Bowyer's aircraft said that they saw unusual coloured lights at the same time. Proposed explanations for the sighting have included earthquake lights and sun dogs.
The Wavewatcher's Companion is a 2010 science book by Gavin Pretor-Pinney.
Alexander Bellos is a British writer, broadcaster and mathematics communicator. He is the author of books about Brazil and mathematics, as well as having a column in The Guardian newspaper.
Shahidha Bari is a British academic, critic and broadcaster in the fields of literature, philosophy and art. She is a professor at the University of the Arts London based at London College of Fashion. She is a host of the topical arts television programme Inside Culture on BBC Two, standing in for Mary Beard, one of the presenters of the BBC Radio 3 arts and ideas programme Free Thinking, and an occasional presenter of BBC Radio 4's Front Row.
"In the Neolithic Age" is a poem by the English writer Rudyard Kipling. It was published in the December 1892 issue of The Idler and in 1896 in his poetry collection The Seven Seas. The poem is the source of the quotation: "There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, / And every single one of them is right."
Cumulus is a monumental sculpture carved from Italian marble and based on the dimensions and weight of an atmospheric cumulus cloud. The work was created in 2017 by American artist Karen LaMonte and first displayed at the Glasstress exhibition during the 57th Venice Biennale. Cumulus stands seven feet tall, weighs two-and-a-half tons, and was carved by hand and robot. LaMonte worked with scientists from the California Institute of Technology, who used a supercomputer and weather modelling software to generate a three-dimensional cloud surface for LaMonte to replicate in stone.
Nick Bailey is a freelance horticulturalist, author, UK television gardening presenter and garden designer. He is a former Head Gardener at The Wicken. In 2010, he became Head Gardener at the Chelsea Physic Garden.
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